Other People's Money

...generally speaking if you're spending your own money on yourself you're going to do it very carefully. If you're spending somebody else's money on yourself you're also going to be reasonably careful about it. However, if you're spending somebody else's money on somebody else, which is what is the case with governments, then you have no real incentive to use that money effectively or efficiently. - Stephen Davies

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1. Why not allow tax payers to decide which government organizations receive their individual taxes?
2. Can you offer an example of a public good that people would forget to fund? (hint, it's a trick question...by offering an example you automatically disprove your example)
3. Is looking at how tax payers would allocate their individual taxes the most objective and accurate way of determining their values? If not, can you offer a better method?
4. Is it possible to argue that a public good would be over/under funded without implying that that the values of tax payers as a whole are wrong/misguided/incorrect?

Logistics...Tax payers would be able to divvy up their individual taxes among three different tiers...Congress (top), Cabinet Departments (middle) and individual GOs (bottom). Each GO would have a fundraising progress bar on their website and tax payers would be able to pay their taxes at any time throughout the year. They would pay their taxes directly to the GOs and the GOs would give them a receipt and send a receipt to the IRS.

Ridiculous!

If people decide to only fund education, and not military... Next day will have a department of war and education, or EPA and Forestry... FEMA and IRS...

Besides this creates more government not less...

this is a republic you elect people to make those decisions for you and in your interest. The problem is they don't make it with your interest at heart. You want to fix the government take the money out.

Campaign Financial reform...Don't you find it interesting that no Democrat/Republican/Conservative is/will actually introduce any bill to limit the money in the government? Why do you think that is?

Diving Mullah

Diving Mullah said:

this is a republic you elect people to make those decisions for you and in your interest. The problem is they don't make it with your interest at heart. You want to fix the government take the money out.

Campaign Financial reform...Don't you find it interesting that no Democrat/Republican/Conservative is/will actually introduce any bill to limit the money in the government? Why do you think that is?

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Campaign reform is absolutely necessary. The problem isn't too much or too little money in government, the government has plenty of money and plenty of noble places to spend it. The problem is too much money in politics. If you were running for office and I told you I would buy you as many flashy commercials as you wanted as long as you would legislate according to the needs of my business or favor my lobby, you might be inclined to cooperate. It's only natural. Presidental races in particular these days are a race to outspend your opponents. We need equal campaign funding to correct this issue.

Eh, it's kind of interesting. Both you guys criticize the current system but then come up with the most superficial of solutions.

Diving Mullah, will a small government suddenly have your interests at heart?

Bardo, so lobbyists only try and influence politicians during campaigns?

Fundamental and genuine change requires a paradigm shift. If you believe that politicians are biased and don't have your best-interests at heart...then you should be able to skip the middleman and direct your taxes to the government organizations of your choosing.

Xerographica said:

Eh, it's kind of interesting. Both you guys criticize the current system but then come up with the most superficial of solutions.

Bardo, so lobbyists only try and influence politicians during campaigns?

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Of course not, which is why we should eliminate the money from lobbying all together. It's bribery, plain and simple.

I was just addressing Mullah's point about campaign reform.

Bardo said:

Of course not, which is why we should eliminate the money from lobbying all together. It's bribery, plain and simple.

I was just addressing Mullah's point about campaign reform.

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so you hate the freedom of speech?

TurtleDude said:

so you hate the freedom of speech?

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Bardo said:

Campaign reform is absolutely necessary. The problem isn't too much or too little money in government, the government has plenty of money and plenty of noble places to spend it. The problem is too much money in politics. If you were running for office and I told you I would buy you as many flashy commercials as you wanted as long as you would legislate according to the needs of my business or favor my lobby, you might be inclined to cooperate. It's only natural. Presidental races in particular these days are a race to outspend your opponents. We need equal campaign funding to correct this issue.

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unfortunately, the only alternatives on the table either restrict speech ( regulating donations) or force people to finance the campaigns of people they don't agree with ( public financing).

i'll take the status quo over either of those choices.... any day.

OK, seriously: Money is not speech. Preventing people from donating ridiculous amounts of money does not in any way stop them from voicing their opinion. And as for public financing, just think of it as financing democracy.

atrasicarius said:

OK, seriously: Money is not speech. Preventing people from donating ridiculous amounts of money does not in any way stop them from voicing their opinion. And as for public financing, just think of it as financing democracy.

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yours is a legally irrelevant opinion....no matter how well meaning you may be.

a right to speak without the corresponding right to make one's voice heard would be a meaningless liberty.... money makes the liberty meaningful, in the real world.

and no, public financing means your money will be going to finance the campaigns of people you may not agree with. you would have no control over your own speech... and I won't minimize that fact

turtledude said:

so you hate the freedom of speech?

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i cant hear you!

Bardos "message" is too loud!

No, dont ask him to turn it down!

That would be limiting his freedom of speech!

Thrilla said:

yours is a legally irrelevant opinion....no matter how well meaning you may be.

a right to speak without the corresponding right to make one's voice heard would be a meaningless liberty.... money makes the liberty meaningful, in the real world.

and no, public financing means your money will be going to finance the campaigns of people you may not agree with. you would have no control over your own speech... and I won't minimize that fact

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Well, you'd be contributing an equal amount to your side as well. And we're only referring to the financial form of speech, not actual speech. So my speech would still be under my control.

atrasicarius said:

OK, seriously: Money is not speech. Preventing people from donating ridiculous amounts of money does not in any way stop them from voicing their opinion. And as for public financing, just think of it as financing democracy.

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Yeah in many ways it is

If I want to spend 100K on an advertisement on TV saying Obama is an incompetent POS that is free speech

TurtleDude said:

Yeah in many ways it is

If I want to spend 100K on an advertisement on TV saying Obama is an incompetent POS that is free speech

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Unfortunately, mormons in utah can also spend hundreds of thousands on issue campaigns in California too. (First one I could think of). Or multinational corps, through their US subs. (Some limits on this, I know)

And mark my words, unlimited money is going to result in unlimited shenanigans. Up to and including "fake" support ads, buying all primetime slots in an area, etc.

I simply don't believe the Founders wanted one side to be able to literally drown out the other with money. To silence the other by simple volume. I just don't see how they would have included that in their anti-tyranny system.

What if a tyrant gets the mic?

TurtleDude said:

so you hate the freedom of speech?

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Freedom of speech has it's limits. You can't threaten lives, you can't defame or slander, you can't incite riots ect.

But yes, I hate freedom of speech. Can't stand it. If I had it my way we would have to apply for a permit just to answer the phone.

Thrilla said:

unfortunately, the only alternatives on the table either restrict speech ( regulating donations) or force people to finance the campaigns of people they don't agree with ( public financing).

i'll take the status quo over either of those choices.... any day.

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I would take both of the first options. Donation regulation is a stellar idea and so is public campaigning.

Thrilla said:

a right to speak without the corresponding right to make one's voice heard would be a meaningless liberty.... money makes the liberty meaningful, in the real world.

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So... those without the money to back up their speech don't have the meaningful liberty to speak? If only there was some way to take money out of the equation...

I'm near the middle in terms of how much I agree. I know far too many people who aren't careful at all when they're spending money on themselves. In particular, those on welfare should be looking hard for sales and clipping coupons.

Bardo said:

I would take both of the first options. Donation regulation is a stellar idea and so is public campaigning.

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Well, it's sort of an either/or thing. If you have publicly financed campaigns, then there are no private donations.

atrasicarius said:

Well, it's sort of an either/or thing. If you have publicly financed campaigns, then there are no private donations.

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They could still donate in between election seasons though, this comes back to the lobbying/bribery issue.

Paschendale said:

So... those without the money to back up their speech don't have the meaningful liberty to speak? If only there was some way to take money out of the equation...

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I've suggested an interesting twist where the airtime itself is the choke point.

Airtime is by license. Dirt cheap. "Public service" is part of the mandate in theory.

So airtime for ads distributed evenly, by lottery, to the top three candidates.

Anybody can make an ad. Spend as much as you want on PR finesse, you still don't get more SHOTS at the public mind than the poor candidate. And sometimes the big money guys will get only middle of the night slots or whatever. The idea being to dilute/discourage money ITSELF speaking OVER others.

Massage the whole mess until a healthy balance can be obtained between freedom of expression and the obvious pollution of money in our democracy.

Talking point politics is preventing us from discussing real problems and constructing reasonable solutions.

Instead we argue the relative merits of a bunch of crap designed by professionals to make us feel strongly about things that may or may not be good for us and that they wont do after being elected anyway, more often than not.

/rant

What about time? Time is money...so should we limit the amount of time that people can volunteer for campaigns? Of course, it wouldn't be fair for one campaign to have more volunteers than the other. What about IQ? Is it fair if one candidate is smarter than another candidate? What about charisma...or looks...debating skills, socioeconomic status, relationship status, religion, race, sex, age, height, handicaps, sexual orientation, etc?

Obviously the only fair solution is to have a campaign where nobody knows who the candidates are! The candidates would be completely anonymous. The debates will have to take place on the internet on forums like this one. Well...I suppose they could take place over the radio as well...but we would have to digitally distort their voices. On second thought, that wouldn't work though if a candidate had a speech impediment or had an outrageous accent.

Imagine we all fell in love with a candidate and then we saw him/her/shim for the first time after they won the election? It would be like that time you met your WOW bf/gf for the first time in real life. *Awkward*

Was my scenario nothing more than a ludicrous slipper slope fallacy? Perhaps. But democracy is all about allowing the side that cares the most to win. It's tug of war. The side that pulls the hardest will and should win. If you're not happy with how much time and effort the other side is putting into their campaign then donate more time and effort to your side's campaign. If you can't pull any harder then pull smarter.

You can't sit on the sidelines and try and dictate how many people are allowed on each side of the tug of war rope. You can't dictate how hard people will pull on the rope. You can't regulate how much money people will spend trying to protect their interests any more than you can regulate how much time people will spend trying to protect their interests.

Any attempt to do so will hamstring democracy. The result will not accurately indicate which side cared the most.

That being said, your taxes should never be spent on public goods that you do not value. Therefore, tax payers should be allowed to directly decide which government organizations receive their individual taxes.